


It's not so simple as just forgetting

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: F/M, Tatsuya's Scenario
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 03:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13825836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: Adults should be able to lie without a second thought.





	It's not so simple as just forgetting

**Author's Note:**

> shout out to the literally zero people who dared me to do this

In summer nights the air is hot and humid and the feeling clings unpleasantly to her shirt and the back of her neck as she steps outside her room to take a break from summer homework. The house is still; in the living room the television buzzes distantly with the evening news. She’s standing at the top of the stairs, her feet bare and cold, watching a boy seated by the landing, tying up his shoelaces. The sky’s gone dark outside and all the houses in their neighborhood are lit up.

She grips at the railing. His back is turned to her.

“Takuya,” Shiori calls out, and he looks at her, startled, obviously guilty in a way only little kids can be. When she sighs at him it’s an act of indulgence on part of her present self: her of ten years ago no doubt had crossed her arms and frowned. “Where are you going? It’s late.”

“Just to the park,” her brother murmurs. “Don’t tell Mom, but I left my kite there while playing today. It’ll just be a minute, don’t worry.”

“Okay,” Shiori says, feeling her fourteen-year-old self’s mouth form into the crescent of a conspiring smile, languid and complacent and so, so stupid. “But don’t stay out too long. I’m supposed to be watching you, I don’t want to get in trouble.”

She relaxes against the banister and wipes absently at the edge of one eye. They’re damp and regretful and her stomach clenches with a decade-old foreknowledge, but she doesn’t move. She can’t.

She sniffles and her cheeks are wet, and no matter how much the knowledge that this is the last time she’ll ever see him, like this, alive and in one piece, presses against her mind, screaming at her to yank him by the hair and demand him to stay, that she’ll promise to take him to buy a new one tomorrow, that she’ll go instead – something, anything at all – all she does is watch as he gets up to his feet and steps towards the door, silently, the same way she did ten years ago and in all of the dreams before.

“Mm-hm,” her brother says. Before Shiori can say anything else he slips outside, swallowed into the dark, and when she wakes up to the sunlight caught in her eyes, she is alone and twenty-four and the clearest memory of Takuya she has left to cling onto is the sight of his body scattered in pieces on the damp grass.  

 

*

 

The thing about being alone is that it’s an easy state to slip into and revolve your life around until eventually it becomes so effortless it’s no longer simple habit but an absolute necessity, like taking bitter tea in the morning or folding her bed or double-checking all the doors and windows are locked tight before she goes to work at the start of the day and before she falls asleep at the end of it. She knows because, like the ever-present grief knotted around her ribcage, it’s something she chooses to embrace. All it takes it someone else’s presence to knock her off-center, and when Shiori notices, it’s sooner rather than later.

She thinks the first giveaway might’ve been when the nightmares started to lessen.

The boy is reticent and rarely around (and she shouldn’t be growing so unalarmed at his stretches of absence) but that only makes his moments of presence all the more jarring. When she blinks at the sun rising outside the apartment window on one of her days off and sees him slumped face-down over the living room couch behind her own faded reflection, something in her chest tightens and she’s not sure why, but she smiles.

It’s unfamiliar; it’s unexpected. It’s not entirely unpleasant. She wants to remember the feeling until she realizes that, too, is another recurrent impulse she’s finding increasingly hard to justify and define as existing within the proper boundaries she’s supposed to have drawn between them, considering the situation. Considering the woman living a few doors away, getting up and leaving for work every day without ever having passed either of them by. Considering, over all else, her dignity. As if Shiori cares. As if anyone cares.

But they should, and her profession tells her she should by its very definition, and all of it means that by extension, she _does_ care. She’s responsible, she’s sensible, she’s proper. She does what she’s supposed to, and so she swallows the feeling down with obedience, or at least tries to. Her outer facade is an accumulation of little white lies fraying with gray around the edges.

Shiori stands half-leaning over him, very deliberately not touching, and murmurs, “Your back’s going to hurt if you keep sleeping like that, Tatsuya-kun,” instead of demands of where he’d been the night before or where he got that nasty new cut running across his forearm, redness consuming the wound, because he’s been around long enough for her to understand – or come to realize – her reflexive concern and urge for answers will only make him uncomfortable. A semblance of ease is the least she can offer him.

When Tatsuya doesn’t respond, she lingers by him for a few more moments, pretending to wonder whether she should do something about the bloody sword propped by the sofa leg, and then she straightens, moving into the kitchen to fix breakfast for two. Her reflection as she passes by the window is smiling, but she doesn’t mind; because after all, looking in from the outside, a smile could mean anything.

It doesn’t mean she’s grateful to have someone around. It doesn’t mean she’s thinking about what she’ll make for him for dinner tonight or for breakfast the next day or the days stretching after, so lightly, as if she expects he might be swayed into staying because of her warmth, rather than of _necessity_ or of making sure of _that woman’s_ safety.

It doesn’t mean she’s glad to be reminded of what it’s like to have something – _someone!_ – to look forward to besides a good night’s sleep and Sudou dead at her feet with a bullet through the head (and then what? what comes after that? she doesn’t know).

It doesn’t mean she’s forgotten the utter wrongness of saying things to him, like _my brother would be about your age now if he had lived,_ or, _I imagine he would’ve fit right into these clothes_ , speaking of the dead every so often in front of his replacement, like he has to know, because she wants him to know (either, or); pretending any of this will make either of them feel any less guilty.

It doesn’t, Shiori tells herself, have to mean anything at all.

 

*

 

“It’s against the law for minors to smoke, Tatsuya-kun,” Shiori says and holds the lighter up against the moonlight, watching the metal glint at the edges with dull interest. She’d found it wedged between the sofa cushions while cleaning. (She’s been cleaning the apartment more often lately. Dust and disorder set her more on edge now than they did before he arrived.)

She turns it over in her hand: a cheap, plain thing, with no scratches or personal inscriptions to prove its age or meaning. He had clearly recently bought it. Her palm clenches around it before opening once more, and she sighs, tosses him a smile that she hopes is enough to undermine the reflexive tone of accusation in her voice. Force of habit, really.

“You really should be more careful where you put these things. What would my superiors think?”

As if the presence of cheap lighter isn’t in any way the _least_ of her worries, ethical or legal or otherwise.  

“It’s not…” Tatsuya’s hand twitches with the intent of an abortive movement, and she feels taken aback. “I don’t smoke.”

Shiori’s smile falters, but returns, deeper than before. “I’m not angry! You can trust me a bit more. Not everyone is your brother, you know. Being an adult doesn’t mean I’ll tell on you.”

Tatsuya accepts the lighter with his usual reluctance (she didn’t expect any less). Their fingers don’t brush, although they could have, and she duly files the missed opportunity away, for sadder, more lonesome times.

“You trust me, right? Tatsuya-kun? Isn’t that why you’re still here?”

“I… I do,” the boy says, in his hesitant way that makes her feel bad for asking, and refuses to meet her eyes. He’s taller of course, and in her heels, if she takes a few steps forward, she thinks her nose might barely brush his chin. His hair is still damp from the shower and the ends of it stick out at awkward places, but she’s too distracted to properly scold him for dripping water everywhere on the carpet. _If I look up_ … and she dismisses the thought without further ado.

If he looks up, she wonders if she’ll see him make that puppy-dog expression again.

Neither of them move, of course.

“I’m not going to force you to tell me things you clearly aren’t ready to. But… you’re allowed to rely on me a little more,” Shiori tells him, when the uneasy silence stretching between them threatens to win out. She shifts on her heel.

She looks at the floor, at her hands. Her nails: finely trimmed and clear because she’s never been conscious of wanting to color them. She thinks of that woman and the glimpse she’d caught of her on the elevator one morning and her hand tenses, but her fingers are jittery with a nervous urge to pick at her nails, chipping them, chiseling at the flesh between nail and finger until they bleed and peel away. She doesn’t know when she became this kind of person and she can’t help thinking she might have been one all along.

Shiori looks at him again and smiles like there’s nothing wrong. “You’re not a burden to me. You’re allowed to stay here.”

“Shiori-san—”

His expression shifts, and she can tell he doesn’t quite believe her words, but somewhere behind the shadows in his eyes she thinks she can see something resembling gratitude – something childish and sincere – and it feeds the warmth unfurling in her chest all the same.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” she half-blurts, half-interrupts, easing Tatsuya into a clear escape route from the previous subject of conversation. All well-meaning concern and sisterly the way she ought to. “You’re hungry, right? I went and filled up the fridge today, so – I promise it’s not some microwaved junk this time.”

Shiori watches the relief spreading almost palpably over his expression, glad the conversation is over, and she’s startled, not so much by how well-meaning she’d sounded but how much she _meant_ it, truly.

He’s a worse liar than he thinks he is, she’s found, but he’s _just_ a child, and at the end of the day she’s not sure if she’s any better. Because she knows: adults are supposed to lie, and be able to lie _well_. They’re supposed to lie without having to blink, without having to think twice, little white moments of dishonesty that mean nothing in the grander picture because _it’s all for your own good_ , and so it all works out, doesn’t it? (She remembers, of course, that lying was how she’d gotten him to stay here in the first place.) They’re supposed to lie to themselves, too.

But –

_Rely on me a little more._

_I worry about you._

_You shouldn’t think of her so often._

– but when it comes to Tatsuya, that’s something she’s finding increasingly hard to do.

 

*

 

The truth of the matter is this: Sudou, the phone call, her brother, none of it had been an excuse. Just a means to an end, another step she needs to take to accomplish her aim for divine retribution. But.

“A card?” one of her co-workers looks over her shoulder to comment at the piece of paper she’s turned face-down on her desk. “Is it someone’s birthday?” When she turns to him with her usual absent smile (saying nothing, betraying nothing) he flicks his hand in pretend surrender and says, “You know, Miyashiro, you’re always so standoffish. I—we,” he corrects, like there’s any difference, like it makes this inane conversation have any more of a _point_ to it, “we barely know anything about you. Is there a reason for that? And you work such late hours! What are you hiding? There’s a reason you’re not really friends with the rest of the department, you know.”

 _Should there be a reason? I’m tired enough dealing with loitering truants and runaway kids all day, I don’t have time to fool around_. After all her directionless watching (and she does a lot of watching) she thinks she’s coming to understand the almost obsessive distance Officer Suou’s eldest son keeps from everyone he works with. The thought fills her with bitter clarity.

“Really now, I’m not that interesting,” Shiori says with flimsy laughter. Her palm still splayed over the card. She thinks: _I might die tonight_. Her smile deepens with rue. “I’m terrible company, believe me.”

Later that night, sitting in her car parked outside Zodiac, Shiori blinks away the neon letters glaring harsh accusations into her eyes and runs her fingertips down the side of the card she’s turning over back and forth idly in her hand, the words half-illuminated by the obnoxious outer lighting. _You’re next._

She doesn’t feel scared or anxious or regretful or anything like someone is supposed to when they’ve just effectively phoned their way into a death certificate. So many people have been killed already; statistically speaking, there’s no chance of her surviving the night. For a moment she tries to picture her limbs splayed apart and all over the floor of some dingy backroom and it’s funny at first, imagining the mess someone’s going to have to clean up and the kinds of things they’ll say about her, after – just another crazy bitch with a vendetta overstepping her lines, trying to play hero – but then she thinks of Sudou and it chills her bones and makes her blood boil and it all brings her back to Takuya and the state Sudou left him in, the only way she knows how to remember her brother anymore because she fears otherwise she’ll forget him.

Normally she would have regretted thinking of this at all, but regrets are a privilege reserved for the living and if she hasn’t been dying for the past ten years, she’s going to die tonight anyway, so she doesn’t.

(Meeting her end the same way Takuya had – she wonders if she deserves it enough that it won’t be such a bad way to go after all.)

Shiori steps out the car and into the building, thinking instead about the fallen track star whose heart, too, died before its time. Dead people are a dime a dozen in the world and Shiori's not conceited enough to think she’s any different, really.

 

*

 

She doesn’t die that night. She meets Tatsuya instead.

 

*

Some days later she watches over Tatsuya’s sleeping form lying awkwardly under the blanket she’s draped over him – because the days are getting shorter and the nights chillier, and who is she if not concerned – and considers how the light and the exhausted state she’s seeing him in makes him look prone; breakable and vulnerable and nothing like the adult-like manner he carries himself with always, like a weapon. Like it’s a verdict hung upon his head.

She’s not sure whether the light is fooling her into looking at him and seeing a lie, or instead throwing the boy he is underneath all the bravado into sharp, naked clarity, but all the same she can’t help thinking: _my brother had to die so you and that woman could forget_.

It settles in her stomach and sinks heavy as a stone, alongside his admission of _trusting_ her – he trusts her, he eats with her, he lets her let him stay. Right now, standing over Tatsuya in the room he’s forgotten to lock, she could very well break. She could do something cruel and unforgivable and it won’t solve anything, but it’ll make something even out between her and fate _for once_ ; and for a brief, wild moment a visceral part of her wants to make that happen. What’s wrong with her?

He’s holding something in his hand. Under his hand and between his thumb and forefinger she can see it’s not the same lighter she’d chastised him for owning before. She barely notices the engraving until it catches the light, but by then she’s too distracted by the realization that the boy is shaking, and she knows it’s not because of the cold.

Shiori reaches over to brush his hair away from his forehead. “There, there, Tatsuya-kun. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she says. She doesn’t ask about it the next morning because she understands now, the guilt haunting his reticence with her.   

 

*

 

She dreams of her brother for the first time in weeks. Shiori watches him lying still on the damp ground and doesn’t turn around to give futile chase to Sudou because she’s tired, for once, tired of stewing over weakness and reliving her regrets. She looks at him and asks instead, “If I stop remembering you – If I’m happy … will you forgive me?”

“You know I can’t answer that,” her brother says, a crumbling pile of ash and bones because they couldn’t salvage enough of him for a burial. She watches and watches and doesn’t avert her eyes with grief when he turns into the little boy she lost all those years ago, smiling at her the same way he did when she took him to the summer festival and they watched the people, marveling at the lights strung up prettily along the trees, their hands linked together and her pulling him tightly along because she didn’t want to lose him in the crowd. She remembers that now. How could she have forgotten? “But you already know, don’t you, Sis? That the only one who can’t forgive is yourself.”

 _I know_ , Shiori says, _I know,_ but when she opens her mouth it comes out as,

“Oh no, Takuya. You made me miss.”

She can’t forgive.

 

*

 

Shiori comes back to her apartment, exhausted despite her long sleep, the smell of disinfectant and bleach still clinging to her skin. The light floods brightly inside as she opens the door and she stands outside the doorway for an overlong moment, breathing sharply and taking in the abundant emptiness laid out in front of her. She closes her eyes, stepping inside at last, and it takes everything for her not to think of Tatsuya, of what would have happened if she’d never met him at all.

One day, she tells herself, it’ll be easier.

 

*

 

But her reflection in the apartment window looking back at her is smiling as though she expects him to still be there with her.


End file.
